Pegboard hooks are a common display and/or organizational merchandising tool utilized in retail environments. The pegboard hooks are utilized to organize one or more retail products that are light weight, oddly shaped and/or small in size. These retail products are otherwise difficult to neatly merchandise on traditional shelves. The hooks suspend the retail products from cut-outs in the packaging of the retail products, and limit their (i.e., the hooks) uses to specially designed packages. There are many other disadvantages and limitations to merchandising with the pegboard hooks. For example, one disadvantage with respect to pegboard hooks is their adjustability. Typically, pegboard hole spacing is about one inch between centres and a typical hook requires two holes for mounting. As a result, the minimum distance between hook centres is about two inches. However, some slim retail products, such as, for example, tooth brushes have an average width of, for example, about one inch. Therefore, in some cases, there is a gap or distance of unusable space between adjacent retail products which, thus, limits the number of product facings which may be provide when utilizing pegboard hooks.
Peg hooks often make it difficult for a customer of the retail products to select a specific retail product hanging near the back of the hook, without disturbing, dislodging or removing other retail products which are positioned in-front of the specific retail product desired by the customer. This often results in one or more of the other retails products being removed from and/or unattached from the peg hooks by movements of the customer. As a result, one or more of the other retail products may fall from the peg hooks and/or be damaged by such fall. Often, a mounting point on the packaging of the fallen retail product(s) becomes damaged from such fall or in the process of, which makes it very difficult or completely impossible to re-merchandise the fallen and damaged retail product(s) on the peg hook(s).
Without continuous aisle facing and upkeep by the merchandiser or employees of the merchandiser, aisle sections merchandised with the peg hooks quickly become very disorganized and/or visually unappealing to the customer.
In the retail industry, it has long been know that appearance is key and very important in selling retail products. If a retail product is displayed in a clean and organize manner, it is easier for the customer to find and select the items the customer wishes to purchase. A retail store often spends a large amount of time and effort organizing, aligning and facing the retail products in order to maintain a clean visual presence and/or appearance. One merchandising solution that retailers have employed to cleanly display the retail products are pusher systems. The pusher system are spring loaded merchandising components, often affixed to store shelves, used to push products forward as customers removes the products at the front of the pusher system. One drawback to these pusher systems is that they require added vertical space between shelves in order to incorporate the on-shelf components as well as space needed to lift a product up and over a retaining fence. This need for extra vertical space can sometimes limit the number of shelves capable to fit into a specific store section which, in turn, reduces retail product holding power of the retailers. For store employees, loading the pusher tracks can often be time consuming and cumbersome as one hand is required to hold back the product already in the pusher system while the other hand is required to load new retail products into the pusher system.
The merchandising systems and methods set forth in the present disclosure divide, push, secure, store, display and dispense retail products in such a manner that effectively prevents the retail products from falling and being damaged while also maintaining organization of the retail products and keeping the aisle sections visually appealing to customers. Moreover, the systems and methods set forth in the present disclosure provide a quick-load pusher system which maintains the retail products in clean and organized manner and/or appearance and allows quick and easier loading of the retail products into the pusher system.